Tag: plants

Can you still see the Milky Way at night? It is a beautiful sight; not something to be taken for granted in our artificially lit world. You look outside and see a dark night; but just a few years ago, Oakridge was an undeveloped 4400 acres, a darker place than it is now. We have in our power, as a community, to work to keep light pollution down within our boundaries and contribute to our overall environment.

I’ve just finished a new book from Paul Bogard titled The End of Night, Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light. He covers all aspects of the increasing artificial light, often poetically. But he raises major concerns about the effects, not only to humans, but to all our wildlife in “five primary areas: orientation, predation, competition, reproduction and circadian rhythms.”

The (John) Bortle Scale of ranking dark skies ranges from 9 to 1. Texans probably need to drive to Big Bend National Park to get close to a dark enough night to rate a 1, or 2. A Class 1 is described as “a sky so dark that ‘the Milky Way casts obvious diffuse shadows on the ground“. http://www.stellar-skies.com/#!thenightskies/c44

It is a more complicated subject than you might think at first glance; an important subject I think. Maybe as members of the community of Oakridge, we should educate ourselves to the global effort to work with the issue. And do what we can. http://www.darksky.org/

A quote from Wendall Berry: “To go in the dark with a light is to know the light. To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings, and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.”

“This male Monarch butterly emerged from his chrysalis this morning about 9 AM. Icaught his picture immediately after his first flight. He is gorgeous!” – quote from Donna Burrows

Please be sure to leave plenty of host plants on your property for this beautiful creature. One source of information to learn more about “hosting” the Monarch is www.texasbutterflyranch.com. Thanks to Donna Burrows, ORWMA Habitat Chairperson, for the wonderful picture above. Another good place to learn about the Monarch is www.monarchwatch.org. Check it out and have fun!